Science

Science is a magic word today.
—James Capshew, Psychologists on the March (1999)

The very name of “science” is a magic talisman which hypnotizes the masses.
—Society for the Extension of Democratic Ideals, Cultural Freedom in Asia (1956)

“Science is a magic word that disposes the reader to accept as fact whatever is said” suggests Frank Severin in Discovering Man in Psychology (1973). Likewise, “‘Scientific’ is a magic word in the modern world” (Mario Pei, Words in Sheep’s Clothing [1970]). Using imagination and reason, scientists

create a third reality between the reality of the physical world and the reality of consciousness. It is a reality-within-consciousness but a reality-from-physicality. Science makes a new world, a world made by the mind from a world which the mind did not make. The success of science since the fifteenth century has been the success of constructing such a third reality. Because of the prestige of its amazing practical achievements, science has succeeded in gaining an unquestionable and apparently permanent place for its third reality within the general structure of reality-made-by-consciousness. Science is a magic by which we seek to control the physical world through consciousness. Among forms of magic, it is uniquely effective. (Philip Allott, Eunomia, 1990)